She Looked
by Noche Buena
Summary: Tristan likes Rory's ears.


edited: 7/22/03. Thank you for the comments! I had no beta or spell-check when I wrote this and I didn't even read over this. It's been that long since I've written fic. I went over it again myself and took out parts I didn't like and edited the tenses (eek- I remembered changing at some point, remembering that active tense is easier to read).   
  
Again, this was just a little drabble coming out of my head. There may be more drabbles coming out later. Ew, I'm done with that word now!  
  
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Tristan picks up the pencil on his desk. He looks at it, thinks of the things he could do with it if he really wanted to do them. He could clean his teeth with it. He could ram it through Ms. Caldecott's head, although that would be rude. He could give it to Paris, declare it a token of his adoration, and then watch her squirm and blush.   
  
God. This class was boring. Why was he taking it again? Oh, yes. That graduating thing. Had to do it to become a productive member of society, right. He *had* heard that somewhere.  
  
He puts the pencil back down in the worn groove of his desk. Tristan scratches his head and tries to listen to the lesson. Usually listening helped for tests. The only problem was the paying-attention-part.  
  
Tristan looks up from his desk. Maybe looking at Ms. Caldecott would help. Ms. Caldecott wears a long, muddy looking skirt with flowers on it and a silk peach blouse. Her hair fluffs around her face, and she briskly points at things on the chalkboard, like a football coach. Only for debate class. It is as though her mouth moves, but no words come out of it. All her movements seem to go very, very slowly.  
  
And then Tristan looks two desks up and to the right of him.  
  
Oh, fuck.   
  
This class is definitely shot for the day. He really tries not to look. Rory Gilmore. Lorelai Leigh Gilmore, born on a Friday at 4:03 in the morning on October 8, 1984 to Chirstopher Hayden and Lorelai Gilmore-- sits two desks up and to the right of him.  
  
Her hair collects back from her face at the nape of her neck and he sees the length of it brushed against by those strands of dark brown hair. The finest hairs stick to the back of her neck. If he concentrates enough, he sees the rise and fall of her chest  
  
under the wool of the navy blue vest sweater, under the crisp blue shirt, up against that skin of hers.  
  
And then back up the neck again. He likes it when she wears her hair down, but he also likes it when it's up, because then he can look at that neck.  
  
When it comes to Rory, he tends to lose any other thought processes for at least a solid hour. There's just too much to focus on with her.   
  
Sometimes he feels perverted. It's not like he's thinking dirty things. No, that's not it. It's just he's pretty sure she'd kick his ass up and down Hartford if she knew. Or at least ignore him some more, which is a thousand times worse than getting his ass kicked by a girl. Not that he wants her approval of his fantasies, of course.  
  
He can't help it if Rory has the cutest ears on the planet. It's ridiculous how cute they are.  
  
And ears aren't even cute, but on her they are. Sometimes she wears tiny little sparkly earrings and if she shifts in her chair just the slighest, Tristan can see the stone pressed up into the tiny little hole made by the puncture of the piercing-gun.  
  
And then there are Rory's eyes. He can't really see them from the back of her. They're blue. Not watered-down, but intense and brilliant. When she's pissed off at him, they get bigger and all Tristan wants to do is kiss her.  
  
And then the way she arranges her feet when she sits in a chair. You can tell she's trying to sit up straight but all she wants to do is slouch, so most of the times her legs go straight out in front of her on an angle and the toes of her feet never touch the floor.  
  
That isn't all he thinks about. Most of the time he thinks about what it would be like to talk to her when they're not pretending to ignore each other. He'd like to fight about things that would end up with their faces being really close together and her breath getting short and sweet on his lips. He'd like to be her stupid fucking heroboy, simply put.  
  
And then kissing. The kissing parts of his fantasies are usually the best. Tristan can't even explain it. It just is and it leaves him feeling happy with an ache in his chest and a smile on his face, because he's an idiot like that...   
  
He wishes he were a nicer person so she would like him. Tristan badly wants Rory to like him, because then it means he's not such a worthless shithead-- this endearment token of his majestic father.  
  
Tristan blinks. Ms. Caldecott interrupts his thoughts.  
  
"As I mentioned yesterday, we will be holding a debate next week. Your subject 'Did Charles I receive a fair trial' The pros will represent the parliament who deemed they had sovereignty and the cons will represent the monarch and try and prove that the charge against him was not legal. What is fascinating, Mr. Dugray?"  
  
He clears his throat, his eyes shooting back to his teacher. "Uh, nothing Ms. Caldecott."  
  
"Nothing, Mr. Dugray?" she says, raising one eyebrow as though to suggest otherwise. Some students in the classroom titter. Brownosers.  
  
"My notes - my notes are fascinating Ms. Caldecott," he lies. He had written exactly four bullet points down, and then underneath that in tiny little letters was the name "Rory." Okay, that wasn't at all scary.  
  
"Yes, they are fascinating Mr. Dugray. As I was saying, the pro and con teams will each have two minutes and 30 seconds for introductions, six minutes to debate, three minutes for conclusions and five minutes for questions from the audience. The winner shall be decided by a hand count from the rest of the class."  
  
His eyes wander back to Rory, his own ears not listening. She hasn't even turned around.  
  
"Does that sound like fun, Mr. Dugray?"  
  
"What?" Fuck. He hates this class.  
  
"The debate. Does it sound like fun?" she asks in a patronizing tone of voice.  
  
It really doesn't. That's not the answer. "Yes, it does."  
  
"It does, doesn't it Mr. Dugray?" she continues onward.  
  
"Oh, it absolutely does Ms. Caldecott," says Tristan with just as much patronizing contempt.   
  
"More fun than staring at Miss Gilmore's ear?"  
  
Huh. Yes, well, that had been rather obvious for the past half-hour or so.  
  
"Yes, Ms. Caldecott."   
  
Nothing was more fun than looking at Miss Gilmore's ear. Except for maybe kissing Miss Gilmore's ear, but that was a whole different ballpark.  
  
"Yeah, I think so too. Ok, any questions? Good, I'll assign your teams," Ms.Caldecott finishes, her eyes giving a sweep of the room and a condescending look at Tristan. Tristan slumps in his seat. She points out the teams.   
  
Tristan wasn't on Rory's team. Figured.  
  
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Rory empties her books from her locker into her backpack and briefly stops between her chem book and her French book for a breath of air. Oh, what fun it is to go to a school where there are no one-horse-open sleighs and the heaters blow overtime and you get stuck in a debate team with people you should be debating against.   
  
"It could've been worse," Rory thinks, taking her French book and coffee mug while slinging her backpack onto her back. "She could've paired me against Paris and stuck me with Tristan and then I would fail and hey, isn't this a run-on-sentence-thought?"   
  
She giggles a little, exhausted and hot and alone in the Chilton hallway. It is the end of the schoolday and all Rory wants to do is to go home. It snows and it's bitterly cold outside. You can see clear through the large windows at one end of the hallway. Big fat flakes fall on the stone animals that guard the spacious halls and expensive chandeliers. Rory is soothed by it. Snow always makes her happy.  
  
"Rory," a male voice comes from behind her. She turns around from a snow view to a Tristan view.  
  
"Tristan," she says. He did nothing today to make her hate him, so she has no reason to be snappy. Yet.   
  
"Hi."  
  
"Hello," she says.  
  
His hair sticks out at odd places and his eyes watch her carefully. Then, she remembers earlier from debate class- Tristan staring at her ears.  
  
"You were looking at my ears," Rory says quietly, shifting the coffee mug to her left hand and letting it dangle beside her thigh.   
  
"I was actually just looking at one ear," he says grinning a little, looking down at the floor, and then back to her.  
  
"I'm sorry?"  
  
"For staring at my ear?" Rory feels the sudden urge to laugh. Maybe it is the fact that the entire pressure of the school day was off her shoulders (except for homework). Maybe it is because it was snowing. Maybe it is because Tristan actually apologized.  
  
"I'm sorry, this is akward. I actually just wanted to say hi to you, after I was done apologizing for looking... uh, at your ear," Tristan finishes.  
  
"Okay," says Rory. "Hi."  
  
"Hi," he says, smiles, and before walking away the tops of his ears do something interesting.   
  
They turn bright shade of red and Rory looks. 


End file.
